“Don’t ask me, M. Jacques; you’re an ungrateful man, for you know that I always singled you out, but you do not care about me.”
“Quite the contrary, Mam’selle Catherine. I smarted under your mockery. You sneered at my beardless chin. Many a time you have told me that I am but a ninny.”
“And that was true, M. Jacques, truer than you believed it to be. Why could you not see that I had a liking for you?”
“Why, Catherine, you are so pretty as to make one fear. I did not dare to look at you. And one day I clearly Law that you were thoroughly offended with me.”
“I had every reason for it, M. Jacques; you took that Savoyard in preference to me, that scum of the Port Saint Nicolas.”
“Ah! be quite sure, Catherine, that I did not do so by wish or inclination, but only because she found ways and means energetic enough to vanquish my timidity.”
“Oh! my friend, you may believe me, as I am the elder of us two, timidity is a great sin against love. But did you not see that that beggar had holes in her stockings and a seam of filth and mud, half-an-ell high, on the bottom of her petticoat?”
“I saw it, Catherine.”
“Have you not seen, Jacques, how badly she is made and that really she is skinny?”
“I saw it, Catherine.”